Update: A Judge Orders the Epstein Grand Jury Files Unsealed
A day after Ghislaine Maxwell grand jury files were granted release
A federal judge in New York has now ordered the Justice Department to unseal the grand jury records from Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 sex-trafficking case. This comes just one day after another judge ordered the release of grand jury material tied to Ghislaine Maxwell.
Judge Richard Berman made it clear: Congress passed a law last month requiring the DOJ to release all Epstein-related records. The language is simple. The deadline is firm. And the courts will enforce it.
Berman also stressed something survivors asked him to keep front and center. These releases cannot come at the expense of victims’ privacy or safety. The new law backs that up. Personal and medical information must be withheld. Identities must be protected.
We still do not know when the files will be released.
This is the latest in a wave of unsealing orders. Earlier this month, a federal judge in Florida ordered the release of other Epstein grand jury materials from 2005 and 2007 — a request that had been denied earlier in the year.
It’s worth remembering that Berman originally rejected a similar request back in August. At the time, the law didn’t exist, and he said the government hadn’t cleared the legal bar to release the material. He also warned that disclosing anything could put victims at risk. He pointed out that the DOJ was already sitting on a hundred thousand pages of Epstein files — far more than the relatively small stack of grand jury documents.
But the law has changed, and so has the ruling. Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act in November with overwhelming support after months of political wrangling — and after the president’s base split openly over how far he wanted to go. In July, Trump called his own supporters “weaklings” for demanding the files be released. But once it became obvious the bill had the votes, he reversed himself and told Republicans to get behind it.
The law says the records must be released within thirty days of November nineteenth. The clock is ticking.
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